Smith: My turkey hunt required a new approach this year, so I found an alternative in the city

The sun crested the eastern horizon, sending rays of yellow light through the hillside hardwood stand, and the morning chorus turned up the volume.

I sat down, back against a Norway maple in the Menomonee River Parkway, and took it all in.

My hunting season 2020 had commenced.

On this early May day, the bird life included a rich mix of migrants. A male rose-breasted grosbeak sang a string of sweet whistles. A palm warbler flew in with a buzzy trill and wagged its tail as it foraged on the ground.

Over the next 15 minutes I noted a dozen more species of colorful, recent feathered arrivals.

As interesting as those encounters were, I had my sights set on another bird.

This one is a resident. It’s big. And loud. And the males are particularly showy in spring.

And although it’s a native to Wisconsin, it was wiped out in the 1800s due to unregulated hunting and habitat loss and was only successfully reintroduced to the state in the 1980s.

In fact 25 years ago I wouldn’t have had a crack at seeing one in Milwaukee County.

But now, in 2020, the bird is a relatively common sight in the suburbs of Milwaukee. I’ve even seen one cross the intersection of North 4th Street and West Kilbourn Avenue.

The object of my quest was the wild turkey.

Thirty minutes into my sit I got the first indication at least two turkeys were near.

A hen gave a series of soft calls to my south.

“Yelp, yelp, yelp.”

Five seconds later the woods exploded.

“Gil-obble-obble!”

The gobbler sounded like it was on the ground, perhaps 75 yards through a grassy rise to my southeast. I adjusted my position; my pulse quickened.

Next I heard the purring of the hen as it grew closer and closer. Eventually two hens paraded within view.

And they weren’t alone.

Two tom turkeys strutted in their wake, tail fans spread wide.

I took a bead on the birds and had my shot.

Click.

The shutter on my camera cycled and I had my first image of the day.

Like so many parts of our lives during the coronavirus pandemic, my 2020 spring turkey hunt required some changes.

In keeping with safer-at-home guidelines, I've curtailed my travel as part of the strategy to reduce the spread of COVID-19.

In late March I didn't make a traditional trip to northern Wisconsin for the Brule River steelhead opener.

For the start of the inland fishing season, I hit Beaver Lake in southeastern Wisconsin instead of the Chippewa Flowage near Hayward, where I had originally planned to go.

And I decided to eat my first period turkey tag in Zone 1 (western Wisconsin), where I have developed a cherished tradition of hunting with my friend Tim Eisele on his property in Crawford County.

Those are sacrifices I'm happy to make in the hopes that if many millions of other Wisconsin residents do the same we'll tamp down the pandemic sooner and keep more people free of the disease.

But it does leave a void.

There are few things I crave more each spring than to hear the earth-shattering gobble and see the fanned-out splendor of a mature tom turkey.

And I savor meals of organic protein procured from the Wisconsin wilds.

I was born in a Wisconsin devoid of wild turkeys. The birds were wiped out in the 1800s and only successfully restored in the late 1970s thanks to a trap-and-transfer program that brought wild birds from Missouri to the Badger State.

The first Wisconsin turkey hunting season was held in 1983 in a small portion of the Driftless Area and for a limited number of hunters.

I didn’t hunt turkeys until the early 1990s, and for a boy raised in Wisconsin to hunt deer, squirrels, rabbits and ducks, all in the fall, the pursuit of a species in spring was revelatory.

The experience of trying to lure in a wild turkey in the spring woods during the bird migration and among blooming wildflowers hooked me deeply.

One spring I hunted turkeys in seven states. In 2003 in South Dakota I met a kindred spirit named Dave Oyler of Rapid City who ran a part-time guide business called “Gobblers Anonymous.”

Oyler devised a 12-step program to treat the addiction that was turkey hunting. It required those afflicted to admit they have a problem and decide to do something about it.

So this spring, with travel out of the question in April and early May, I opted for a photographic safari for wild turkeys near my home.

The birds were here, that was for sure.

At 6:25 a.m. on Feb. 26 I was traveling west on West Revere Avenue near North 68th Street in Wauwatosa and watched 13 hens and poults fly down from an overnight roost.

Suburban residents get accustomed to seeing a handful of common bird species move through the airspace and visit feeders at their homes.

For generations the largest typically spotted was the American crow.

But in recent years sightings of an even bigger year-round bird – the wild turkey – has become an everyday experience for many in Milwaukee County.

I focused my photo hunt in the Menomonee River Parkway, a roughly 600-acre section of the Milwaukee County Parks system that forms a green corridor through Wauwatosa, and an adjacent private property where I obtained permission.

I took several dozen images of the toms as they showed off for the hens.

Later that morning, I found another tom, this time without company. I made a series of yelps with my voice, and he responded with a hearty gobble.

I snapped off several frames of the bird’s outstretched neck and flying snood as it yelled to all the world: “Here I am!”

Over the course of three days, I was able to see these and other wild turkeys on the public and private ground. I also was graced by visits of white-tailed deer, including adult bucks sporting nubs of new antler growth.

Make no mistake; this was not a normal turkey hunt. Sounds of the city were constant companions, too. Buses rattled along on nearby streets. Dogs barked down the block. Train horns sounded.

A few mountain bikers, hikers and dog walkers stopped and asked what I was up to.

The birds, too, acted differently. On two occasions I stood and walked after birds, which didn’t spook. Limits of photos came relatively easily.

But it helped scratch the turkey itch and keep my therapy on track.

And as my old friend Oyler says, “you have to make treatment a lifestyle."

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